History of Design

Ph.D. Professional Seminar. 18 February 1997.

Ron Kline

Professor Kline's work has focused in part on the history of science and technology. With regard to design, three pertinent questions arise: The answer to the question of who defines design has changed over the years. Before WWII industrial design societies controlled who was allowed to call himself "engineer" or "computer scientist." After WWII colleges and universities started to do this. Currently there are accrediting boards which examine the curriculum and requirements at educational institutions.

The actual definition of "design" is problematic. In 1961, an MIT Committee on Design offered a definition which was in effect a tautology, suggesting that design was the process of designing! (without stating it directly of course.) More recently (1995-1996) a similar tautological definition was proposed in "Criteria for accrediting programs in Engineering in the United States."

There are other questions which arise concerning the learning and teaching of design. Most broadly, can it be taught at all? Who is to teach it? It is a learning-by-doing activity, but analytical skills are also required. So can it be done in colleges? Or should it be kept to industry? Kline prefers an empirical approach which includes the following:

With regard to learning through failure, Kline mentioned a book by Petroski: To Engineer is Human which is a collection of case studies of engineering failures. Studying them is important. Some examples from the past include the pyramids around 2500 B.C., and medieval cathedrals. Another example was the Quebec bridge in 1907. Fairly good analytical techniques were used in its construction, and yet it collapsed. More recent examples: the 1965 NYC blackout which led to lots of changes in the power systems, the Three Mile Island failure in 1979 which was due to poor instrumentation, hardware failures, operator failures and political failures occurring in tandem (for example, the printer which was outputting warning signals was two hours behind realtime), the Challenger explosion and the Therac-25 machine which administered radiation treatments. In the Therac-25 case there were 6 six serious accidents and 4 people were killed due to a software/interface bug.

Emulation is another way people have learned to design. We tend to think of it as somehow "second-rate" and in fact it is discouraged in schools. Analysis can be taught in schools very effectively, however it is usually not sufficient to design a new system. There used to be "apprenticeship programs" wherein people could learn by emulating experts. People often tend to think by analogy as well. Edison, for example, when inventing the light bulb was emulating the gas lighting system. Some other examples include the ENIAC which emulated Harvard's Mark I and the 1971 Intel microprocessor which emulated the PDP database system.

Lastly, Kline discussed the role of users in the process of design. People who use technology have often ended up redefining it. For example, originally the phone was intended as a sort of telegraph, and social use was discouraged. Users quickly redefined acceptable use and today AT&T actively encourages people to "Reach out and touch someone." Radio was originally intended to be a wireless telegraph (i.e. point to point transmission), but early "radio hackers" used to to play music for their friends and the notion of broadcast was born. The mini-computer at DEC was intended for scientific uses and then the personal computer was advertised by Apple as being helpful for household chores. E-mail was not supposed to be the major function of ARPAnet, but users liked e-mail and it is now becoming ubiquitous. In conclusions, design is a social process of people in teams working with the government and/or other larger organizations. It is really learning by doing . Since this is the case, what should be taught in schools? Kline suggests that the following should be encouraged:

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Notes by millett@cs.cornell.edu.